Improvement in signals for railways



N'. WHITNEY.

Railroad Signal. No. 105,154. Patented July 5, 1870.

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I Letters vPatent No. 105,154, dated July 5, 1870.

IMPROVEMENT IN SIGNALS FOR RAILWAYS.

The Schedule referred to in these Letters Patent and making part of. thesame.

To all persons to whom these presents may come:

Be it known that I, NnLsoN WHITNEY, of Bellingham, of the county ofNorfolk and State' of Massachusetts, have 'invented a new and usefulAlarum Apparatus for Railways; and do hereby declare the same' to` befully described in the following specification, and represented in theaccompanying drawing, ci' which- Figure 1 denotes atop view, and

Figure 2 is a verticalsection of it as applied to a railway-track.

lhe purpose of such apparatus is to sound an alarm by means of theiianges of the wheels of a train while such may be in the act of passingby the apparatus, the object of such an alarm being to give notice orwarning to the hrakemen or otherA persons on the train, when the lattermay be nearing a low bridge or place of danger, or may have reached aspot where itl may be necessary to throw the brakes into action on thewheels.

In the drawing- A A denote the rails of a railway-track.

B is a bent lever, pivoted in a standard, C, and being arranged at rightangles, or thereabouts, with one of the rai-ls.

One arm of the said lever extends underneath the rail and into aguide-chair, D, and has a double inclined plane head, E, projected upiom it, and against the inner side of the rail,the form of the head andits airangement with the rail being more particularly shown in Figure 3,which denotes a longitudinal scction of the track.

The opposite arm of the said lever is jointed to one arm of a secondleven-F, having its fulcrum sustained by a standard, G.

A bow-spring, H, Ais applied to the inner arm of the lever B, so as toforce it upward.

A connecting-rod, I, jointed at its lower end tothe putermost arm of thelever F, is extended -upward alongsideof a post, K, and hooked upon aspring hammer, L, which, formed as represented, is fastened to the post,extends through a slot in it, and has a metallic head, h, to strike upona bell, M, arranged at the upper part or top of the post.

l As the wheels of one side of a. train of cars may, in succession, passover the head E, it will be depressed, whereby the hammer will' be drawnaway from lthe bell. Immediately after the passage of each wheel beyondthe head, the elastic force of the spring of the hammer willcause thehead of the hammer to strike the bell, the bow-springl Hin the meantime,serving to actuate the lever B in a manner to effect 'the raising of itshead, E, up to its higher or normal position.

Thus it will be seen that, at a passage of a wheel over and by the headE, the bell will be struck. By means oi' the second'lever F, theconnecting-rod I will be operated by a direct tractive or tensilestrain, and, consequently, will be preserved in its due relation to thehammer of the bell.

The above described apparatus is not for giving notice to persons at astation or road-crossing of' the approach of a car or train while suchmay be at a distance therefrom, but is specially designed for the objector objects, as hereinbefore explained, viz., to give warning or noticeto a person orpersons ou a car or train in motion.

I am awareofthe alarm-signal for railway draw-` bridges for which, onMay 3d, 1855, Richard Keeling led an application for a patent, suchapplication having been subsequently rejected. I make no claim to anycombination or arrangement of devices described or represented in thespecification or drawings of such application.

The bent level', as used by the said Keeling to strike a bell, would bean unwieldy and impractical affair, and, when operated by a train ofcars, would swing to its rigidity, and so force the bell out of positionas to prevent it from being sounded. which the car-wheels roll servesmerely to depress the lever-arm.

In carrying ont my invention, I use an elastic or spring hammer, L, tworigid levers, and a connectingrod I, and spring H, lthe object of thetwo levers being to actuate` the spring of the hammer by a tensilestrain on the rod I,'the whole being thus rendered a practicalapparatus.

In Kee-lings alarm mechanism the bent lever used to strike the bellremains out of contact with the bell after the passage of a train by it,but with my appa- `ratus the hammer is always'in contact'with. the bellafter the train may have passed it, and is drawn away from the bell bythe action of the wheels, and discharged upon it by the spring of suchhammer. The

spring H operates to aotuate the levers, so as to admit thehammer-spring to actuate the hammer-head.

The apparatus, as described, to be applied to a railway, as and for thepurpose as explained, such consisting of the head E, the two levers B F,the spring H, the connecting-rod I, the spring hammer'L, and the bell M,all constructed and arranged in manner with respect to each other andwith the track, substantially as explained.

NELSON WHITNEY. Witnesses: l

It. H. EDDY, S. N. PIPER.

The spring over

